This invention relates to electrical cooking appliances and more particularly to such appliances for baking toroidal or donut shaped cakes.
Electrical cooking appliances for baking donuts and the like cakes are well known in the art, see for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,718,260; 1,966,411; and 4,066,797. Such appliances conventionally include mating upper and lower heated grids each having at least one annular, concave recess or form defined therein. Cake batter or dough is placed in the lower recess and the upper grid is lowered to bake the donuts. The mating forms or recesses define an enclosed toroidal cooking chamber or cavity which contains the batter as it is baked and shapes the baked batter into a toroidal or donut shaped cake.
In the donut baking appliances of the prior art, the central portion or core of the annular concave recesses are structured in a variety of ways. In the appliances of U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,718,260 and 4,066,797, the cores are merely raised, central, flat mating surfaces, while in U.S. Pat. No. 1,966,4ll, the central cores of the annular recesses of the upper grid include cavitities in which mating projections formed at the central core of the annular recesses of the lower grid are received for the purpose of aligning the upper and lower recesses and grids.
Of the prior art donut making appliances shown in the aforementioned patents, only the device of U.S. Pat. No. 4,066,797 includes provision for adding cooking oil to the dough or batter so that the resulting donuts have a finished crust. In the device of U.S. Pat. No. 4,066,797, an additional cavity is provided in the outer or top wall of the upper grid. Small apertures connect the cavity with the upper annular recess. Subsequent to the lowering of the upper grid, after batter has been placed into the lower annular recess, cooking oil is poured into the recess. The oil flows through the apertures into the upper annular recess and over the cake batter, coating the batter.
While the last mentioned arrangement for adding cooking oil to the donut forms appears to be workable, a quantity of heated cooking oil may remain in the exposed cavity in the upper grid where it can be spilled if the appliance should inadvertently be moved and the oil receiving cavity provides still another area of the device which requires cleaning after the cooking process has been completed.